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Black Hat Speaker Selection

Black Hat USA News:
We’re very proud to announce a new feature for paid Black Hat attendees
starting with the USA show in August – delegate access to our CFP system!
Paid delegates can now log into our CFP database, read and review our
proposed presentations and share their ratings and comments with Black Hat.

Your ratings will help us create the show you want to attend, and even help
focus presentations as they’re being created. We are excited to see what
kind of information we learn about what interests our delegates and what
kind of talks meet their needs best. We’ve always said that our delegates
make Black hat the experience it is, and we’re glad to have the opportunity
to extend their influence on the final product. To read more about this new
opportunity, go to:https://www.blackhat.com/html/blackpages/blackpages.html

I think this is tremendously cool for a couple of reasons.

First, attendees get to influence what Black Hat selects. Help build the conference of your dreams!

Second, I’ve heard griping over the years about BlackHat’s selection process being opaque. I’ve helped out occasionally with talk selection, and let me tell you, what’s also opaque are a lot of the submissions that come in. Sometimes, it’s really hard to decide if a given submission would be good or not.

Another complaint is “the same speakers speaking every year.” A lot of times, these are easy accepts. The submissions are clear, the value prop is there, and they pack rooms.

I’m a big fan of transparency and openness, and I think that BlackHat and its attendees will all benefit from this move.